wilcohttp://www.readthehook.com/taxonomy/term/2785/all
enExterior outlets: Stirratt explains why Wilco rocks onhttp://www.readthehook.com/104449/exterior-outlets-stirratt-explains-why-wilco-rocks
<p>Over the past couple decades, few bands have been as consistently successful as Wilco, who have managed without a steady lineup or even a regular sound. Starting off as an alt-country act, Wilco changed into an experimental rock band and swapped members almost as frequently as aesthetics (with multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett's 2002 departure discussed almost as much as that year's landmark album <i>Yankee Hotel Foxtrot)</i>. As the roster slowly settled, the band moved away from experiments for a while, but last year released one of its most challenging records, <i>The Whole Love</i>.</p>
<div class="sidebar">
<h2>Wilco</h2>
<p>nTelos Wireless Pavilion</p>
<p>Thursday July 19<br /><a href="http://nteloswirelesspavilion.tickets.musictoday.com/nTelosWirelessPavilion/moreInfo.aspx?event=149694&amp;outlet=1251">$45</a> - gates at 6pm</p>
<p>Opener: Lee Ranaldo Band (of Sonic Youth)</p>
</div>
<p>Bassist John Stirratt (along with Jeff Tweedy, one of only two remaining founders) acknowledges that the recent stability has been fruitful.</p>
<p>“What Nels [Cline, guitarist] and everyone can do in terms of atmosphere is sort of endless,” says Stirratt. “Almost any sort of weird sound could be organically generated. It's amazing, but it's also sort of intimidating.”</p>
<p>In <i>The Whole Love</i>, this&nbsp;"wider" possibility becomes guitar freakouts and extended folk numbers, punk attacks, and country tones. The disc's scattered styles stay sonically unified, feeling like the natural output of a band that's comfortable with itself but unwilling to stay so.</p>
<p>“Within the band, there's a restlessness," says Stirratt. "You don't want to make the same album twice."</p>
<p>This album stems more from studio work than a relaxed album like <i>Sky Blue Sky</i>, and these songs became a "journey" throughout the recording process. “Sunloathe," for instance, features Cline on four types of guitars, and his bandmates add an assortment of keys, synths, and even a glockenspiel.</p>
<p>“'Art of Almost,'" explains Stirratt about the tense opener, "started out as almost a soul jam." Stirratt says orchestration, such as the strings on “Black Moon,” emerged under the influence of co-producer and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone's influence&#8211; "a very attentive, detail-oriented person in the studio."</p>
<p>Making an ambitious, varied album could have felt unsafe, but Stirratt says, “I guess we've made risky records that were more of a departure from the previous record before.” This album, though, was the first one for Wilco's own label dBpm, which provided the band some extra incentive to put out something good. But as Stirratt points out, “In the past, we've been rewarded for taking risks.”</p>
<p>Wilco's experiments on <em>Yankee Hotel Foxtrot</em> and resulting label drop and re-signing has been well documented, but the band's had plenty of artistic freedom.</p>
<p>“For years, Warner didn't really care enough about us to really stick their nose in," laughs Stirratt. "Moving on to Nonesuch after that, we were looking for creative freedom, and we found it.” So has Stirratt.</p>
<p>“I'm working in collaboration with the rest of the members on Jeff's tunes," he says. "I was more of a solo songwriter on the first album," he explains, "but Jeff had been in a collaboration for so long at that point, he had so many songs, and he was looking for a platform for his material.”</p>
<p>One of the keys to Wilco's current stability may be knowing that the band that plays apart stays together, and each of Wilco's artists have other musical outlets, such as Stirratt and Sansone's the Autumn Defense.</p>
<p>“I don't really understand how a band stays together without any sort of exterior [outlet]," he says "It's important to see how other people play, so the thing doesn't feel so hermetic. It keeps us sharp, even if I'm not playing bass.”</p>
<p>Maybe for that reason the group seems as united in its variance as ever.</p>
http://www.readthehook.com/104449/exterior-outlets-stirratt-explains-why-wilco-rocks#comments_BreakingNewsFeaturedwilcoMusic FeaturesMon, 02 Jul 2012 19:59:32 +0000Justin Cober-Lake104449 at http://www.readthehook.comPhotos of Jeff Tweedy at the Paramounthttp://www.readthehook.com/65817/photos-jeff-tweedy-paramount
<!&#8211; This will not be inserted &#8211;><!&#8211; This will not be inserted &#8211;><div class="captionLeftLandscape"><a href="http://www.readthehook.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/tweedy_td_3.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-41642" title="tweedy_td_3" src="http://www.readthehook.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/tweedy_td_3-325x325.jpg" alt="tweedy_td_3" width="325" height="325" /></a><strong>Tweedy at the Paramount.</strong><br />
<br /><small>PHOTO BY TOM DALY<br />
</small></div>
<p>
He played on the 30th anniversary of John Lennon's death and appropriately performed Lennon's "God" as the final song of the evening.<br />
<strong>Tweedy at the Paramount.</strong>&nbsp;</p>
http://www.readthehook.com/65817/photos-jeff-tweedy-paramount#comments_BreakingNews_Musicjeff tweedywilcoPhotophileMon, 13 Dec 2010 11:36:21 +0000hawes65817 at http://www.readthehook.comWilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrothttp://www.readthehook.com/99089/wilco-yankee-hotel-foxtrot
<p><strong>By Mark Grabowski</strong></p>
<p>I have balls of steel. You want proof? Other than my exceptional “standing up to bullies” ratio (5 confrontations: 1 turning the other cheek), and my no-fear method of taking tests the last year of college (highest test score in one class: 45%), I have the guts to say, even at this early date, that Wilco’s new album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, will be the best rock album of the year. <br />Wilco frontman and principal songwriter Jeff Tweedy has walked a long and winding road. He began his somewhat rocky musical career in 1987 playing in the now renowned alt-country band Uncle Tupelo, which, in the simplest of terms, melded punk rock’s energy with the truth of good country music before breaking up in the Spring of 1994. <br />From the ashes of Uncle Tupelo, Tweedy formed Wilco, and after a pop-ridden and not exactly stellar debut, they began to evolve into something far removed from Tupelo’s down-home style. Their next two albums glorified great song writing and careful tune construction. On their third, Summerteeth, a hint of things to come. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was the light at the end of the rabbit hole.<br />The first Yankee track, “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” opens with a steady buildup of sounds: an organ here, a guitar there, on and on to a more straight ahead tune&#8211; until the end. In the first of three “breakdowns” across the album, what was a more or less straight-ahead pop-rock becomes a noise collage, for want of a better term. Pianos can’t keep time, guitars drop out, drums disappear, and sound effects reign; this is not the sweet country-pop pap of your father’s Wilco. This is Wilco on acid.<br />Some of the highlights on the album include “Jesus, etc.” with a gorgeous viola/violin opening; “Ashes of American Flags,” a slow song about nothing; and “I’m the Man Who Loves You” with the longest continuous vocal verse line since Heroes and Villains by the Beach Boys. (I've been in this town so long that back in the city I've been taken for lost and gone and unknown for a long, long time.)<br />Personally, I don’t feel I’m out on a limb at all declaring Yankee Hotel Foxtrot the best album of the year already&#8211; it’s an awesome creation, fit for years of careful headphone study, and easily lives up to the hype surrounding it. If someone releases a better album in the next six months, I will own up to my mistake and print a retraction, and cover myself in maple syrup. <br />But something tells me it’s not going to happen. <br /> <br /><br /><br /><br /></p>
http://www.readthehook.com/99089/wilco-yankee-hotel-foxtrot#commentswilcoMusic ReviewsThu, 14 Jul 2011 15:40:57 +0000anon99089 at http://www.readthehook.com